Anna Halsdorf, 14, an eighth-grader at James Madison Middle School has mastered the Rubik’s Cube but is still working on how quickly she can solve the three-dimensional puzzle. She can complete ...

But no matter the cube, the process of solving one involves math — specifically, algorithms. Roman Chavez loved Rubik's Cubes so much, he founded the Jr. Oakland Cubers in high school.

Mathematicians and hobbyists have had a half-century of fun exploring the 43 billion billion permutations of Erno Rubik’s creation.

The new top speed is a massive improvement on previous Rubik’s cube robots—in 2009, for example, the record was one minute and four seconds.